DETROIT (AP) — It was once again time Sunday to drive an "evil spirit" from Detroit as hundreds of revelers turned out for the second annual Le Marche du Nain Rouge.

The event features masked and costumed participants who take to Detroit's streets to banish the folkloric "Nain Rouge," or "red dwarf" that supposedly haunts the city, an old French folk belief dating from Detroit's birth as a French colonial outpost.

MLive.com posted a video showing costumed parade participants who found two parked cars blocking their dragon float. The video shows them rocking and pushing the cars several inches out of the way to let the float pass.

"If anything emulated the purpose of this parade, that was it," said Peter Van Dyke, one of the organizers. "If there's a problem, fix it. Get your hands dirty. ... Welcome to Detroit."

The lighthearted Marche, preceded Sunday by a 5K run called the Run du Nain Rouge, comes as Detroit continues to wind its way through bankruptcy proceedings.

"I'd never experienced anything quite like it," David Lilly, who moved from Manhattan to Detroit just before last year's event, told The Detroit News. "The Nain Rouge quickly became something I bragged about to all my out-of-state friends as an authentic, original piece of Detroit."

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